For me, it's definitely the topic particles in Japanese. It just seems like a really interesting thing that is a reason enough to want to learn Japanese, even excluding other great features it has. Here some info on them.

We've been having a smattering of art, poetry, and photo participation posts, such as this, and this, and this, and this.

We seem to have enough ~tilders to have a schedule of sorts, but not enough to have each activity every week. How about we rotate weekly activities for a while and see how it goes? I'm thinking we have enough interest for a series of visual/craft based threads and a series of writing based threads. For example:

July 3-9th Photography (subject exploration or technique)
July 10-16th What are you making now?/Speedart
July 17-23rd Photography (topic or equipment)
July 24-30th What are you making now?/Media challenge

July 3-9th Freestyle Writing (up to a thousand words)
July 10-16th Themed Drabbles
July 17-23rd Poetry format challenge
July 24-30th It was a dark and stormy night

Please note that these are suggestions and not an arbitrary bid to codify content or become TEH LEADER. I just think it would be fun to have an activity to look forward to every week. We could even just sign up for hosting a week's topic, and whoever is in charge of the week picks the activity.

What does everyone think?

This is a hard topic for me personally, so please be gentle. I am at my core an institutionalist and an incrementalist, so I tend to want to both value and improve institutions through incremental (bit-by-bit) change.

A common concern and criticism of people who are impatient with incremental changes is that there would be tons of unintended consequences. While that concern resonates with me, it clearly doesn't seem to resonate with much of anyone else right now.

So in this I feel alone, frankly, and a lot of the reason for that loneliness is because incrementalism seems to have been firmly rebuked by both left and right wing political groups around the world. Help me understand what's happening. Where is incrementalism failing for you? Do you see any role for bit-by-bit change?

The scope of this thread could expand to the high heavens, so please understand how widely varied the examples might be that we each might bring to this discussion.

Wanted to see if we could get some conversations going with any freelancers who may be around. I figured a good place to start is with one of the more commonly discussed topics, which is the online marketplaces catering to freelancers.

These days, Upwork seems to have gobbled up a huge chunk of that market, while garnering plenty of criticism and complaints along the way for how they handle it. The graphic design space seems to have a little more competition in marketplaces, with 99designs being a frontrunner it seems. Truthfully, there just aren't that many platforms to pick from regardless of your specialty. Which can be a positive, as it provides a centralized place to look for and post available work, can increase exposure to the freelance market as a whole, and ensures you don't have to maintain profiles across numerous platforms which can be far too time consuming sometimes. But of course there are many downsides that come along with that.

The standard advice that comes with such discussions is to ignore the online marketplaces entirely because of those downsides. Competing against an international labor pool, as well as an under-experienced labor pool much of the time, in a format that heavily encourages price competition above other factors can be disastrous for your bottom line (and your sanity). These platforms also generally remove a lot of the negotiating power that a freelancer needs to leverage, as it is much more difficult to establish the captive audience that can be built with more personal interactions.

And frankly, that standard advice has continued to be my own, both for my career as well as to others who may seek such advice. But it does make me wonder if there is a better way to do it. Of course as a developer I'm always looking to find a way to solve problems, so I can concede I may be looking for solutions in a place that is misguided to try to fix.

What has been your experiences with freelance online marketplaces? What advice do you give when asked about it? What would you like to change?

I have been using Tildes for about a week now. I have come over from Reddit where I am primarily a lurker. I lurk because I often feel my thoughts and opinions on topics and discussions have been touched on because discussions are already hundreds of comments deep by the time I arrive. The biggest positive with Tildes is the fact that the community is currently small and I read the post/sarticles that interest me instead of jumping straight into the comments to be given a synopsis. I now read more than just the headline.

I still have not found my 'voice' in regards to posting comments related to articles/stories that I have read. I think it is because I haven't found a discussion that I am really interested in. I have posted a couple of news articles that provide information about the part of the world I am in but, while they interested me, I didn't feel the need to discuss their contents further so I didn't add any comment to start a conversation to the post.

Regarding providing some more content to the site. My hobbies include, like everyone else, traveling, reading, and photography. I am no where near being an influential voice in any of these! I am not interested in having a travel blog or a website but I would like to provide information, incase someone else here is interested or has experiences too. For example, I recently took a short weekend trip from Bangkok, Thailand to Ayutthaya, Thailand. I rode the train, visited the sites, visited a bar, ate some food, and stayed the night. I want to provide a write up on my experiences and thoughts of this trip. Is a post in ~hobbies with the tags of: thailand, ayutthaya, bangkok, train the way to go?
What do y'all think?

Sharing photographs - Taking pictures is another hobby I share with everyone else. I enjoy sharing pictures I am proud of. I tend to post to r/nocontextpics, because I like their rules of no back story in the title. I also post to location specific sites. I do this to show off my pictures and to feel good from earning points. I do not post pictures to facebook very often because I like having the feel of anonymity. I don't want to be perceived as a pretentious twat. How does everyone feel about picture posts in ~hobbies with the tag(s) like: location, device used, etc..

My problem would be not 'spamming' photos. With the age of the site, and my brief interaction with it, no one wants to see 2+ picture posts from one user in the ~hobbies group.
Any thoughts on etiquette or rules for picture posts? Allow: Yes/No?

Last night I posted a topic called "real sad boi hours", a ritualistic kind of post I've carried over from Reddit. I chose to post it in ~talk since the description for the group says it is for "Open-ended discussions with fellow Tildes users, casual or serious", and I felt there is nothing more open-ended or casual than real sad boi hours. At first, the topic was meant just as it usually does on Reddit. Got a few responses in which people talked about their day and how they were feeling. But right now, the most voted comment is complaining about how we need to restrict invitations to prevent low effort users like me from joining. One thing the user said was that is is obvious there are users joining who have not read the manifesto. I'm just going to spew my own opinion on a few points here:

1. I don't think gatekeeping is a solution, especially since iirc this site is not going to be permanently invite-only. Not to mention that's just a childish solution anyway.

2. I don't know what is expected from ~talk. As I said before, I legitimately believe my nightly "real sad boi hours" posts fit exactly what the description of the group says. However, that is up to interpretation I suppose.

3. If my post was against some rule (which apparently roughly 17 users believe it is), there should be some kind of rule set or moderation set in place (though I understand why there isn't, the site being private still and all). My impression so far has been that if you don't like content, you just ignore it. But now I'm seeing that apparently, people don't like to ignore it. They want me gone.

4. Is every user expected to read the manifesto? You may be able to get away with this while it's private (and even then, there is still users like me who only read a few pages) but if/when this site goes public, expecting every user or even just most the users to read the manifesto is a pipe dream. As far as I can tell, the reddiquette (which I have also not read) is shorter than the manifesto and nobody reads that either unless they need to. The only reason I know the reddiquette is because I've picked up on bits of it as time went on.

Maybe I'm just a butt-hurt bitch that people complained about me and I can't take criticism. I'm sure people who disliked my post will think that is it. I also may have a skewed perception of what this site is. I view it as an improvement upon Reddit and honestly I think some of this innovation may work great, which is why I'm here in the first place. I want to hear your take on what I said, and anything else you'd like to add.

Could we get new post ordering: something like reddit Hot system?

Now, the ordering by activity is great, but the big issue with it is, that when you go to less-active ~, you only see two or three topics. Even on front page, there are just 15 or 20 topics. I know, it's because I limit threads to only several days, but there is problem when I set limit up to week, or two: there are very old threads on the front page right at the top.

So could we get something like reddit has? Display posts according to upvotes/time (comments?), but do not limit them to few days and show them at least +- chronologically - so no two weeks old posts at the top of front page.

Maybe this could be achieved just by tweaking the current activity order by boosting young threads more and vice versa.

Partially inspired by the Abduction as Romance topic.

Both the Damsel in distress and Women in refrigerators tropes exists heavily in both written and screen media, especially in the comic book world, where women are reduced to easy plot devices to tell a man's story.

Women are "important" in that they matter to a man, usually the hero. They are mothers, daughters, girlfriends, but nothing more. They are defined purely by their relationships to the hero. If they are depowered, maimed or murdered, the tragedy is in the hero's loss, not hers.

People, men and women, do get hurt and die in fiction and in reality, and I'm definitely not saying this cannot be done on the page. A guy grieving his girlfriend's death doesn't automatically make her a "refrigerator girl".

For example, Gwen Stacy, who may or may not have been accidentally killed by Spiderman in his attempt to save her. Her death, and Peter's reaction afterwards has always been very organic and real to me. Her death didn't feel frivolous, and readers felt the loss as much as Peter.

As for an example of a damsel/refrigerator girl, (there are too many to choose from), let's go with Mr. Freeze's wife, Nora, who is literally in a fridge. I'm pretty sure there's no even passing Batman reader who doesn't know Nora. But do we honestly know anything about her?

Thoughts? Any common damsel/refrigerator girl that you think actually shouldn't be classified as such?

Website: https://hacksummit.org

Honestly I'm not following this block-chain thing that much closely (apart from knowing the theory of how it works on a basic level) and I'm curious to see if this event can help me get what it is all about :)

Anyone interested in a free pass can send a PM to me (do not reply here please) and it would be interesting if we use this topic to talk about your previous experience with the event or block-chain in general.

I'm sure some of you might have this as a hobby or more of a profession.

I'm pretty new to it as I haven't really done much at all yet, and I'm looking to create a sheath for a knife. Are there any good videos to watch before diving into it, or any articles that come to mind?

Think of this as a place to discuss this topic as I didn't see one posted yet. Any input will be helpful!

Since it doesn't look like @basicbaconbitch is around (or they just intended it to be a one-time thing), I guess I'll post this!

What have you been reading? What do you think of it? No need to do a big review if you don't feel like it, but I think we'd all love to hear your thoughts! Recs or discussion of each others' reading habits is encouraged!

--

Quick question: Do we want regular threads like these? Personally I think ~books is lacking a place to just drop in and talk about something that isn't news or a specific discussion topic, but maybe I'm alone on that.

Inspired by @Marszalot 's topic about humor podcasts I would like to see you guys have any good recommendations about high performance mindset topic.

Recently I stumbled across Cindra Kamphoff's podcast at Spotify and I've been enjoying it a lot. Most of them are short, which suits very well my time to walk from home to the office (20 to 30 minutes), but it's weekly, so I'm searching for more sources to listen about high performance mindset / habits.

Hey ~ers, I'd like to keep a weekly discussion going on this topic (every Wednesday or so?). Let me know if this isn't something you want to see in the future, I always liked these, but maybe not everyone does? Last one got a lot of interesting posts, let's see how it goes this time!

I've been playing Grim Dawn quite a bit lately. I've kickstarted it back in the day, but never got around to really playing it after the early access period. I was burned out on Diablo clones at the time: Torchlight 2, Victor Vran, Van Helsing, etc. I think the break did me good, as playing it fresh is quite enjoyable. There's a good variety of classes and builds, fun abilities, and tons of gear number crunching (playing thunder smashing shaman now). Just the way I like it! I'm hoping to snag one of the DLCs once I reach a high enough level and play with my friends on one of the unlocked hardcore difficulties.

So I was thinking the other day -- is there any good reason to allow voting from the main ~'s page? For clarity in this discussion, I'm talking about this view.

Some pro's and con's for removing the vote button from the main page:

Pro:

• Discourages "drive-by" voting. We all (mostly?) know that reddit in particular is notorious for having highly up-voted posts that most users read the headline / top-comment and not the article itself. This is particularly noxious for political posts, as often times a vote on a post is an extension of one's own biases / beliefs, rather than an engagement on the topic at hand. This hasn't reared it's head to the same extent on ~'s yet (this post with 15 votes / and only 1 comment would seem to be the closest I can find), but I think it would be a mistake to think that this sort of behavior wouldn't migrate over from reddit. Other reasons for voting on a post without at least getting into the comments are equally bad e.g.: "Oh, I like that band / song / movie / whatever" -- this is a key driver of recycled content on /r/music or movies or tv etc. This reason alone is enough for me to consider removing front-page voting a net-positive

• The user is forced to enter the comments to vote, wherein they may actually read something that sparks their desire to read the thing / interact with the post. The goal on ~'s is to promote substantive discussion, and I think this would be an interesting tool to try to direct users to said discussion.

Cons

• It's more inconvenient, but hey -- so is putting the comment box at the bottom of the page (and I think that's a good idea on net as well)

• UI inconsistency -- this is a bad thing, but we've got a lot of smart computer people on here. We can probably figure out some way to make this work.

• It doesn't actually force the user to read / listen / interact with the submission, just suggests that they do. But hey, let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, eh?

Hanging Questions

• What about voting on ~group pages? My off-the-cuff idea would be that voting on ~music.world.calypso would be a good thing (to promote organic growth of quality posts from small ~groups), but not voting on overarching groups (~music) -- but then the UI issue rears' it's ugly head

• What about comment / submission voting from other places e.g.: user-pages, notifications, inbox replies, etc.

So I noticed the entire front page getting clogged with "question" type posts, ranging from "what are your favorite..." to "pls help me choose..." type posts. This might be mainly due to "activity" sorting (sorting by votes is a little better), but that's still the default and doesn't change the general dominance. I took this screenshot earlier and I did not see a non-question post without scrolling. None of them were from ~talk, either.

I know people have different views on this, but I remember from my brief time moderating that it's generally a good idea to restrict these types of posts, for the simple reason that people love to dump their "favorite" lists, which makes these types of threads dominate the frontpage, while they tend to produce always the same responses (intuition might suggest they produce great discussion but that's usually not the case). They're best pushed into specific subreddits (subgroups?).

I think this is a rather small and specific issue, but it might be a taste of future difficulties with voting/moderation. Banning content for being disruptive/abusive is one thing, but the best places I know for discussion also ban via more subtle rule sets. They take measures into account (often at the cost of facing a ton of backlash from users seeing their posts removed for "unfair" reasons) that keep one type of post from taking over the frontpage, potentially drowning out more interesting ones. I'm still trying to picture how this would translate from Reddit's moderation model to Tildes'.

One way would be to open up a subgroup for any sufficiently large category of posts and give moderation the option to move posts to a subgroup that people can opt-out from. Another is very diligent tagging and filtering. My concern is that neither could produce the complex, fine-grain type of moderation that distinguishes really good subreddits (yea, they exist!) from spammy ones. "Hide all posts tagged 'question'" could hide "what's your favorite...?" type posts but also posts that ask a really deep and interesting question. So would you filter "question && favorite"? That turns filtering into almost a scripting job. It doesn't seem reasonable to expect users to put this much effort into content filtering and it wouldn't help "shape" discussion culture, as the default (no filters?) would keep most users jumping from one "favorite game/band/movie/programming language" post to the next.

So far, it seems rules are set site-wide based on mostly removing blatantly off-topic, bad faith or trolling content. As the groups grow, however, I believe it's absolutely vital to also allow more subtle policies (think "only original sources for news articles" or "only direct links to movie trailers", etc). As groups branch off into further subgroups, it might suddenly also be reasonable to have very specific rules like "no more individual posts about hype topic X, keep discussion in the hub thread until Friday".

The only way I can see this work out (and maybe I lack imagination) is via a "meta" section for each group that allows whoever is decided to be part of the moderator group to decide upon and clearly formulate rules specific to it. It could be a wiki-like thing, it could involve voting on changes, maybe automation via "default tag filters", etc. Other users could see the policies mods have decided upon and maybe even "opt out" from moderation actions being considered in filtering, to have no reason to be paranoid about "censored" content.

Am I too pessimistic about tagging/voting solving this on its own? Am I too stuck on doing it "the reddit way" (albeit with hopefully better tools)? I just really believe it's subtle moderation like this that might make or break Tildes in the long run.

TL;DR: How would more subtle or group-specific moderation policies be decided? Just tags+votes? Should there be a "meta" sections for each group where mods can agree upon specific rules?

One thing I ended up realizing is that for e.g. code challenges in ~comp, there could be threads with a lot of code blocks that could easily take up a ton of screen real-estate. Something like the following isn't so bad:

/*
    This is a short multi-line example that doesn't
    take up much screen real-estate at all.
*/

But, what if the average comment for a particular topic has several of these with 100 lines or more? This could make navigating the comments really cumbersome as the number of comments grows. In the case of code challenges, lengthy code snippets could be very common, and collapsing the comment threads may not be the desirable course of action--in collapsing the thread for navigational convenience, you lose the ability to view and contribute to discussions. Hosting the code elsewhere risks links expiring or becoming lost or broken, and it feels like a clunky workaround to try to avoid inconveniencing other users.

With that in mind, what are your thoughts on having these code blocks display in a collapsed state by default with only a preview of the code block showing? Is there any support for this idea? If so, should this be implemented as part of Tildes itself or as a client-side extension of some sort? Are there any concerns about this?

(If there's general support for the idea, but opposition toward adding it to the Tildes code base, I may get off my lazy ass and try to hack something together.)

So I'm not really sure about this one. It's AMC.

I had read something about it several weeks ago, and I expected more. It's, apparently, the story of this overweight woman working as a writer for a fashion magazine. She's very dissatisfied with her appearance and doing whatever she can to lose weight. She seems more resigned than depressed.

It looks like the main topics are self deprecation, self empowering, fat shaming, the-beauty-inside and I guess feminism. There is a second plot regarding a mystery that will surely be developed in later episodes.

All in all, for a 2-episode premiere, I thought it was pretty slow and felt like not a lot happened. The characters were a bit flat and stereotypical for my taste and dialogues weren't brilliant. I think there were probably some good insights here and there, but nothing really engaging for me. There wasn't a lot of tension and I can't really point any algid moment. There was just a funny line I think, and the dramatic scenes were very soft key.

I might give the next episode a chance, but probably only when I have nothing else to watch.

I'd say 5/10.

Tags [noise, troll, flame, off-topic] got abused and used as an "I disagree" function. What if Tildes requires an explaination/argument for why the comment/post is either noise, off-topic, trolling/flaming. This way we can hold taggers responsible and accountable for the tags and to some degree see if the tag is reasonable or misused. All the reasons for the tags can be gathered on a "discussion" page for the thread, a bit like Wikipedia's talk pages for each entry.

If you've made it this far I'd love to hear your thoughs, reactions and critiques.
And for those who've made it this far: Enjoy this photogenic cat

Are users supposed to be able to continue to comment in topics that have been deleted? Once deleted, topics are no longer visible to the group, but the topic is still accessible by URL and users can continue to comment. I just want to clarify if this is the intended functionality or a bug.

Example: https://tildes.net/~test/280/deleted_topic

Hi folks,

I've seen a few posts and comments discussing "what is tildes.net all about?" or even "what does Tildes want to be about?" and I thought I'd throw in a related topic I've been thinking about recently. I am interested in the medium of communication itself, in addition to the goals and general philosophy of Tildes.

To start, the question of "what makes Tildes different from Reddit?" is interesting. One concern about Reddit is the huge proportion of either low-quality posts or attention-chasing memes. And a lot of Tildes users seem to be asking why that is the case; and whether a site like Tildes can be different.

Some say that Reddit is a victim of the profit cycle. As a commercial entity, Reddit must aim to bring in as many users as possible, thereby increasing advertisement revenue. And lowering the bar to new user entry means that you get more and more people who aren't really concerned with making thoughtful, high-value contributions to the discussions.

And there's certainly some truth to that. So by this model, Tildes should be different. It is non-commercial, not profit-driven, and it has mechanisms in place (and in development) that are specifically designed to weed out low-value contributions/contributors.

But still, even at this early stage, when the userbase is small and has been more selectively accumulated, some users are expressing concern that Tildes is showing signs of becoming just another Reddit. True or not -- I don't know.

Beyond the profit goal, another dimension for analysis is the medium itself. "Medium", as in the tools of communication; as in radio vs. print vs. television vs. web forum, etc. In 1985, Neil Postman wrote an interesting book called "Amusing Ourselves to Death" that reiterated Marshall McLuhan's idea that messages are partly shaped (and constrained) by the medium over which they are transmitted. And by extension, some media are better at communicating some types of ideas than others.

Postman was writing in 1985 when television was the dominant medium. He argued that the image-oriented medium of television was best suited for entertainment rather than rational argument or intellectual discourse. And thus the use of television (particularly commercial television) as a medium drifts away from thoughtful, intellectual engagement of the consumer, and toward gripping, decontextualized video clips that imprint ideas on the viewer and keep them coming back for more.

Television is just not as good as print media for communicating deep, complicated ideas that the consumer can engage with. (This isn't to say tv can't do it, but it's just not as good at it.)

So what about web forums like Reddit and Tildes? This is what I've been thinking a lot about recently, and I wonder what other Tildes users think about it.

Web forums are different than television for sure, in that they are mostly text-based, and users can interact with them by both posting text and responding to what others have posted.

But web forums are different from ye olde fashioned books too, in the sense that web forums seem to eschew longer, more highly-structured arguments. (Speaking of that, I hope this post isn't too long!) There seems to be a "king of the mountain" syndrome in web forums, in which posters vie for attention, while watching as posts rise to the top and are quickly replaced by newer, catchier posts.

Is this the fundamental dynamics or metaphysics of web forums? --the rapid turnover of attention-seeking, short posts?

If so, will Tildes get pulled down into that same whirlpool?

I don't think it has to be that way, but I believe it is a strong warning that we have to think hard about how the structure of the medium itself channels the type of content we will see here.

--
Stepping back further in Postman's argument is his deep concern about the effect of the dominant medium on popular discourse in a society.

When mainstream media is reduced to commercial jingles and quick, entertaining memes, the very foundation of liberal democratic society is at risk. People become uninformed about the important issues of the day, and become disengaged from the democratic process. As that disengagement increases, special interest groups (read: corporate lobbyists) fill the void of providing direction to governing bodies. Citizens then become more disillusioned and even more disengaged. This is a well-documented phenomena called "the death spiral of democracy", and it scares the shit out of me.

When I first read Deimos' "Announcing Tildes" blog post, I saw a motivating philosophy that I feel is one of the most important issues of our time. We don't live in a perfect world right now, but we're in a world that appears to be on the edge of tragic yet avoidable decline; a world in which the values I assume many Tildes users would like to promote are being paved over by entities that only value profit.

I think that Tildes can be really, really important, and it needs the user base to deeply engage in the analysis of what will make it work. What is it about the web forum as "medium" that shapes the content we are exposed to here? And how can we devise the mechanisms that prevent it from degrading into another Reddit? Is a shared motivating philosophy enough, or do we need to re-engineer the medium itself?

So into the discussion of "what should Tildes be about?", this post is a long-winded way of saying that I think part of it should be about discussing how we can we construct a sustainable new form of media that improves society and supports our highest values. What does this next generation medium look like?

--
Note: just to be clear, Deimos has already put a lot of great thought into this (cf. https://docs.tildes.net/). I'm just arguing that the topic of the medium and the mechanics of the medium should be a topic that all Tildistas engage with.

One of the things I absolutely loved about Hacker News was the technical, and generally high quality discussions about technology. That is something I also really appreciate about Tildes right now. But as the years progressed I went to HN less and less because I found just about any topic related to PHP, JS and Node were filled with toxic low effort comment/jokes about the language.

I don't feel it is constructive to replay the exact same tired jokes about the exact same warts everyone has known to exist and avoided/worked around for years now. It's okay to not like these languages or technologies, but can we try to be better and a little more inclusive and constructive in our community? I feel like it's going to be a losing battle as the site grows if we're already stooping to these levels.

I know the site is still in its infancy and cross-posting won't be much of an issue at the moment, but I was interested to see what other users thought about cross-posting, whether we should allow it and if so how it should be done?

Personally I am in favour of cross-posting but I think some site mechanic should exist that doesn't allow two separate threads to be created. Instead, the cross-post should link directly to the original thread so that discussion of the topic can be kept in a single location but the topic itself can reach multiple tildes. For example, say an article about music being created artificially by a robot was originally posted in ~music. Someone may want to cross-post this to ~tech, and to do so would only have to click some sort of cross-post button and select the tilde they want to cross-post to. Anyone browsing the ~tech tilde would see the post, but upon clicking it would be taken to the comments page of the post originally made in ~music. Some indication of where the post was originally made could be given as well when viewing the cross-post on another tilde.

I was reading a discussion about this on here earlier today, and I've already lost it! 😬 Sorry if this is just creating more noise, but we clearly need better ways to find content. The search feature will go a long way, but here are some other ideas:

Tag search. On any topic with tags, the tags should be clickable links to URLs like https://tildes.net/tag/elder+scrolls. This page would show all topics that use that tag, with sort and filter options. There should be a way (maybe built into the search form) to type any tag and jump straight to this page.

Recently viewed topics list. Reddit shows a sidebar listing the last n posts you viewed. It's admittedly a little creepy seeing your history displayed like that, but it's a useful way to jump back into conversations for follow-up later. The old Reddit design had a "clear" button to delete the history, but curiously that is no longer present in the redesign. (Privacy features like that should not be overlooked here.)

Saved topics. Another feature from Reddit. Every post has a "Save" link below it, that adds the post to your personal saved posts list, which can reached from your profile. Saved post lists are only visible to the users that own them.

Repost detection. I really like how Ask MetaFilter helps posters make sure their content is fresh before they publish it. The submit button under the new post form is labeled "Preview" and clicking it shows what the post will look like before publishing it. This gives posters the opportunity to proofread and ensure their text formatting is correct. More importantly, the site scans the content of the post and displays a list of five possible existing posts that match it:

The following previously-posted questions might be related to the question you're asking. Please take a look before posting to see if any of these answer your question.

This flow adds an additional click before you can actually post, but I think it's for the best. The slowdown politely nudges you toward considering the quality and originality of what you're about to say, without being overbearing. The main MetaFilter site also checks all URLs you enter to see if anyone has posted them before. Note that these tools don't prevent anyone from posting, they just empower users to avoid reposting and reinforce good posting behaviors.

Repost flagging. I have a half-baked idea about allowing users to flag topics as reposts, but I haven't seen this implemented before. This would be separate from voting. A user wishing to flag a topic would be asked to provide the URL of an existing topic it duplicates. This wouldn't affect the topic itself, other than to add a small banner to the top of the page: "n users flagged this as a repost of the following topics: [list of links]". Then anyone would have the ability to [agree], [disagree], or append a link to the list. Public consensus would affect the future of the topic... if enough others agree the topic is redundant, it could be auto-deleted or just algorithmically prioritized lower than non-reposts. If enough disagree, the flag could be auto-removed from the topic. The usernames of the flaggers should be public, and there should be a way to view both a user's frequency of flagging and whether consensus agreed with those flags. Accountability would be important for this sort of system.

Ability to subscribe to users. I saw the other feature request for a "friend" mechanic. I agree with the commenters who said it would be too much like a social network. However, I could see a use case for a "Subscribe" button on a user's profile page, just like the ones on group pages. This would cause all topics posted by that user to be included in your main page, even if they are in groups you aren't subscribed to.

I'd be interested to hear your feedback on these suggestions, as well as other ideas specific to increasing content visibility.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no good fit for topics ranging from personal finance, investing, portfolio management, budgeting, running a business, markets, etc. Seems ~finance or similar could be a catch-all for a massive category of topics that don't have a place currently.

Let’s imagine two women: Millie and Bonnie.

Millie has a body-wasting disease. Her body is slowly breaking down, organ by organ. The only organ which is untouched is her brain. However, the body that supports that brain is deteriorating, and she is near to dying.

Bonnie is a healthy person who suffers an unfortunate accident. She takes a sharp blow to her head which damages her brain, killing her instantly, but leaving her body intact and healthy.

Due to the magic of non-existent futuristic medical technologies, doctors transplant Millie’s brain into Bonnie’s body.

Who is the resulting person? Who is walking around? Is it Millie because it’s her mind, or is it Bonnie because it’s her body? Or is it someone else?

For legal purposes, we identify a person by their physical attributes: fingerprints, retinal patterns, dental history, face. According to that methodology, this person is Bonnie, because she has Bonnie’s physical attributes. If she used Bonnie’s passport, she would be able to travel because her face and fingerprints match the photo and fingerprints in the passport. She would be accepted as Bonnie.

However, this person does not have any of Bonnie’s knowledge or memories. She remembers Millie’s life and friends and education. If we asked her to sit an academic exam about a topic that Bonnie learned, she would fail, but she would pass an exam about a topic that Millie learned; she is therefore entitled to use Millie’s academic qualifications as her own. Her encephalograph would show Millie’s brain patterns. She would recognise Millie’s family and friends.

If Millie and Bonnie each committed a crime before the transplant, should the post-transplant person be held responsible for either crime, or both, or neither? If she was in court, a witness would identify her as Bonnie, who was at the scene of one of the crimes. However, she would not remember committing Bonnie’s crime, but would remember Millie’s crime. Can she be held responsible for a crime she doesn’t remember committing (that brain is now dead)? Can she be held responsible for a crime noone saw her commit (that body is now dead)?

So… who is she? Is she Millie or Bonnie, or is is she some new composite person: Minnie?

Partly inspired by a couple of science fiction works:

• 'I Will Fear No Evil', by Robert A Heinlein

• The Star Trek DS9 episode 'Dax', by Peter Allan Fields and D.C. Fontana

I'd like to suggest site search as a Tildes feature. It would be useful to know if a topic has already been discussed by people on the site. For instance I don't know if a search feature has already been discussed.

Or perhaps I noticed a topic I wanted to follow up on later that I can't find now. Or I there was a reply that said something interesting I wanted reference, etc...

So I've been having a slightly off-topic discussion on a thread here and figured this would be a good subject to have wider input on.

I don't think markdown adds anything to Tildes and I think it actually degrades the experience for new users. Right now we're mostly old experienced reddit users and mods, but that hopefully will change. To me, markdown adds a not insignificant hurdle to formatting. Markdown has very few uses besides reddit and Github, and even then there's a few different types.

I suggest a WYSIWYG text box with a tabbed HTML option for those who want to use code formatting. Let's use something that's standard and encourages users to learn useful code.

Tell me why I'm wrong Tildes!

Edit: I primarily use mobile, so maybe that's part of the disconnect here. But it seems I'm the only person who cares and still thinks markdown is almost useless. I'm fine being in the minority. I still feel it's a good idea to look beyond the bleeding edge to the time when there's 300,000 or 3,000,000 uses.

Have a good day everyone!